'Oh, grandfather, grandfather!' cried his weeping grandchildren, clinging to him in their terror, 'protect us from the fearful Christians!'
'If ye be still the children of Israel,' answered the old man calmly, 'fold your hands and bow your knees, turn your faces towards the east--towards the ruins of God's holy city--and pray to Jehovah, the God of your fathers! While thus engaged in prayer, what if these stones crush your heads and dash out your brains? Praise Jacob's God with me, and die in the name of the Lord God of Sabaoth! Then shall His cherubim bear ye in peace to our father Abraham's bosom!'
'Is that the only comfort you can bestow, simple old man?' said his son Samuel, the father of the children. He was the richest jeweller in Hamburg, and now saw his valuable shop exposed to be ransacked and plundered by the furious mob. 'Can you give us no better advice than to pray? _I_ know something better. We will all let ourselves be baptized to-morrow.'
'Would you renounce the faith of your fathers on account of your anxiety about your jewellery, my son?' said the old man, casting a contemptuous glance on the wealthy, trembling Israelite, who, overcome with fear, was rushing from keeping-place to keeping-place, gathering together and packing up his most valuable articles.
'Truly it is indifferent to me whether they call me Jew or Christian,' replied Samuel, 'so I can save my goods and my life. When the question is, whether I shall be a rich man to-morrow or a beggar--whether I shall walk the streets, and go to the Exchange in peace, or if I am to be pelted in open day by the very children, and risk my health, my limbs, my life itself--when my jewels, my furniture, my wife, my children, and my windows are in question--I should be a great ass if I hesitated to let a handful of cold water be thrown upon me. It is only a stupid ceremony; but I daresay it is just as good as our own crotchets. Now-a-days that is the best creed which gives security and advantages in trade and commerce.'
'Miserable being!' cried old Philip Moses, drawing himself up to his full length, 'accursed be the spirit that speaks by your mouth! It is that pestilential spirit which has wrought evil among God's people, and caused them to become a byword to the nations of the earth, and an abomination to the Lord of Heaven! Accursed be those goods and that life for which you would barter the faith of your forefathers, and mock even the altar of the strangers, to which you would fly in your abject cowardice! Accursed be the security and the advantages for which you would betray Jehovah! Accursed be the trade and the commerce that have enticed God's people to become the slaves of Mammon, and frantic worshippers of the golden calf!'